Pat Riley, former coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, at one point in his career shared with his players some very keen advice. As someone who was committed to gradual and consistent improvement, Pat Riley inspired his players to improve their performance by only one percent in each of
five areas. He convinced them that if they could improve their game, across five areas, by such a small margin, that it would make a substantial difference — winning a championship. The logic was quite simple: If each player could increase his own performance by five percent, with twelve
players, this would lead to a sixty percent improvement for the team. Pat Riley was on the ball considering that after sharing this advice with his team, the Lakers had their best season ever.
How easy is it for one to improve oneself by at least five percent across at five key areas? Do most of us have time to do so? We make excuses, of course. What might the five key areas be? For basketball players, as in the case of the LA Lakers, those depended on each of the individual players and their corresponding roles. For folks who can’t shoot a basket if their life depended on it, such as myself, some of my key areas would include: physical fitness, mental enhancement, reading enrichment, among others. While lack of time is one of the many excuses I have made in the past
for not making improvements that were necessary in my life, I believe there are solutions for most every problem.
One solution I found is that of taking multi-tasking at face value and really leveraging it for what it’s really worth. What is normally considered by some to be “multi-tasking” is actually a form of sequential task-switching rather than true parallelized multi-threaded multi-tasking. The key difference being
parallel versus sequential, with the classical definition of multi-tasking being sequential, while parallel multi-threaded task execution involves dispatching many tasks in parallel.
I would like to explain the difference with a couple of practical and concrete examples: When I go to the gym every other day, I use all sorts of equipment, ranging from the weights, to the treadmill, and as well as stationary bicycles (which I enjoy using the most). While on the stationary bike, I have found that it is easy for me to do each of the following tasks simultaneously, in parallel, rather than sequentially:
1) Drink my protein shake or electrolyte drink
2) Read a book
3) Listen to music or an audiobook
4) observe pieces of art on my smartphone
Through this truly multi-tasked approach, I am able to improve myself each day across a number of aspects, including my physical fitness, my nutrition, and my education by at least 1%, all within the same span of time! This is quite powerful since I am clearly leveraging the same unit of time fulfilling a number of tasks simultaneously, in parallel. This means I no longer have any more excuses to make.
The type of multi-tasking most folks believe helps them be more efficient usually happens to take place in the office, on a workstation, where folks switch from one task to another, ranging from checking email, to working on a spreadsheet, and back to crafting an email message, then onto another set of tasks. Clearly, most of us are aware that there is very little efficiency in such a scenario. There is a cost, an expense associated with spin-up, which is paid every time one switches from one task to another sequentially. Such an expensive approach differs from true multi-threaded task execution, such as in the use case taking place within the gym.
The difference is quite clear: in true multi-tasking, all tasks being performed are taking place simultaneously (in parallel), whereas with the faux version which usually takes place in the office, there is less efficiency since task-switching requires spin-up right before every task is performed.
In much the same way that Pat Riley improved his team’s performance, leading them to win a basketball championship, I also very much believe that a one percent improvement across as many key areas as possible, will compound OVER TIME, leading to a substantial and significant enhancement in one’s personal performance.